


To Leave Betimes

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 19:52:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The School Certificate play</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Leave Betimes

There was a moment of silence so long that Laurie risked opening his eyes to peer out amid the forest of legs. And then the parents burst into applause, and Stone was hauling him up, and rapturously whispering, “We managed it, you should see Hazell’s face, oh, _Spuddy_.”

Hazell was well and truly puce, and clashed terribly with his wig, and quite made Laurie forget the ignominy of his tights and make his bow with a flourish. Stone fetched both their foils, and Hamlet and Laertes strolled off into the wings, arm in arm, quite content with their night’s work. The play had been terrible, of course, the play always was—not even Lanyon and Treviss had been able to save it, three years ago, and it had been generally agreed that nobody could, if they couldn’t—but oh, the warm glow of satisfaction at having grabbed the spotlight quite firmly away from Hazell’s histrionics and danced the quadrille all over it.

Laurie wasn’t sure when exactly that had become more important than getting through the performance without embarrassing himself more than could be helped, but thought it very likely to have crystallised over the first week of rehearsals, as Hazell swanned around in an old petticoat, giving himself airs. Stone, seething at being informed that he looked as though he’d never had any but morbid thoughts in his life and being landed with such bloody huge soliloquies because of it, had been inevitably the easiest to persuade—Laurie thought privately that Stone would’ve started the conspiracy himself, had there been none to participate in. Harris fell in through sheer bloody-mindedness and Carter from a misplaced sense of loyalty. Somers, midway through the third week of rehearsals, banged into their study and demanded to be let in, before he succumbed to the temptation of strangling Hazell with the school-tie.

“Well,” Harris said, falling in behind them, “I thought he’d get up and take a swing at me when I pelted him with the flowers.”

“Broke me out of role, nearly.”

“Oh, good Christ, Stoney, like you were ever _in_ role.”

Oh, but he had been, Laurie thought, clutching the glee close to his heart, they all had been, wonderfully flamboyantly submerged in their roles--Polonius an old fool and Laertes a young fool and Hamlet an indecisive twit, and, best of all, Carter and Harris as Claudius and Gertrude, murderous and immoral enough to make even Jeepers happy. And nobody could say they’d shirked, since they so obviously had not. And Hazell had been well and truly upstaged. It was very likely the best Parents’ Day in a good while, and he’d hardly spoken to his mother yet.

Lanyon was coming up the stairs as they went down to strip out of their costumes, and favoured him and Stoney with a cordial, “Well fought,” and him—only him, Laurie was very sure—with a secret smile that promised that Lanyon knew and, just perhaps, approved.   
  
Laurie clambered down to the changing rooms like a general voted triumphant by his troops.


End file.
